Twitter users were concerned about Kay Burley. Having reported live on Sky News for around 14 hours yesterday, she appeared to have slept in her clothes. Hastily she set the record straight. “To clarify, this is a different blouse to yesterday,” she reassured her public. “However I will concede it is a similar colour.”

Again she was outside the hospital, waiting for the royal baby to make its first appearance. On the whole she was bearing up well, with only the occasional sign of strain. “I thought someone shouted, ‘Here it is!’ But it turned out they were just saying ‘Lewis’.”

For a second day, TV reporters coped heroically with the demands of filling hours of airtime with no information. The newborn’s name still hadn’t been released so they referred to him as “Baby Cambridge”, which sounds like the name of a wayward socialite in F Scott Fitzgerald or Truman Capote. (“Say, Baby Cambridge, haven’t you drunk enough?” “Leave me be, Frank! You’re not my father! AND YOU NEVER WILL BE!”)

In the absence of news, Sky’s Paul Harrison fell back on his powers of intuition. “The Duke and Duchess will have had lists of girls’ names and boys’ names, so they’ll have dispensed with the girls’ names quite quickly.”

With royal sources offering little help, he wasn’t so much reporting as divining. “Part of me believes… Purely a gut instinct, but… I’ve got an outside feeling the Queen won’t visit today… The Duke may say something. He may not…”

Still, he did his best to analyse what few clues there were. “Word is the Duchess’s hairdresser has arrived. Quite a clear indication something is afoot. First and foremost, a bit of a hairdo.”

At least Paul seemed to be enjoying himself. Not so Nicholas Witchell on the BBC, who looked frankly depressed. His demeanour suggested he rather disdained the whole media circus, as if he were somehow separate from it. Maybe he’s like Mr Salter, the glum Foreign Editor in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop: he’s got this big serious job, but really he just wants to be in charge of competitions, or choosing the jokes for the children’s comic.

Social media continued to whir, with 25,300 tweets a minute about the birth. Thousands shared the cover of the new Private Eye (headline: “WOMAN HAS BABY”). But pity the poor minion responsible for the official Twitter account of the government of Guernsey. “Congratulations to the Duchess of Cambridge and the Prince of Wales on the birth of their baby.”

Back to Sky, to find Dermot Murnaghan describing the royal baby as “a helpless mass of humanity”. Paul Harrison was still striving to give insight where possible. “They will definitely have left hospital by tomorrow morning, but that of course could be anything up to 11.59am.” Still pondering names, Kay Burley challenged centuries of biblical scholarship by opining that “King David doesn’t have a ring to it”.

Children were asked to say what advice they’d give the newborn heir. Suggestions ranged from the motivational (“Follow your dreams”) to the practical (“Don’t be sick on the Queen’s shoulder”). Some were slightly disconcerting (“Don’t give up”, “Never lose hope”).